The post asked about how do deal with these people who waste the time and resources of some very well qualified agencies like the Google Partners.

IMHO think it is super important to qualify your clients / or customers is as important as them qualifying your business and thought I would take a minute to post these 5 tips hoping they will help save you time and money.

What is a tire kicker, exactly what it implies, they want and take the services, intellectual property, and our resources that we offer for free and waste endless hours without paying us a cent!

Why did I create tire kicker policy?

To protect my time because time is one of the most valuable aspects we have as agency owners.

I'm not even going to bore you with the amount of time, money, ideas, and service I have provided for free trying to gain the trust and business from a client and here are some solutions I came up with to get rid of these types.

1) Charge a consultation fee, even if is a nominal fee like $25.00, this one tip will weed out a lot of tire kickers. In fact, you will be surprised that some people even get offended (psst, you don't want to work with these types).

2) Limit your consultation to 1 hour, that's it. If they can't get the information in one hour, then they need to hire you as a consultant at a minimum of $150.00, at least that's the going rate where I"m located.

3) If they must have additional consultation time, charge them at a rate you are comfortable with.

4) If you must travel to them then advise them there is a travel fee of $20.00 or whatever you deem necessary to cover your travel costs.

Normally if a potential client meets me at my office or within a 5-mile vicinity I will just eat the cost as a business expense.

This is another tactic that I use to get them to come to me versus me traveling to them is that they will save money and not have to pay a travel fee.

5) Qualify your clients just like they qualify you, Be picky with the clients you work with because IMHO it is of no use to work with people who have unreasonable explanations.

It's like my Mom use to say, I can't go to the gas station and tell them that I work for Church and expect them to give me free gas if the Church has not paid me for my work.

Same applies here, you have to qualify your clients and charge them accordingly. Know this seems like kinda a tough way to be, but as you have found out if you don't protect yourself you will find that they will get away with wasting your time and with no work, Not Cool!

Plus, your a freaking Google Top Contributor, that's Gotta be worth something, Right? Do you tell these tire kickers that you are one? Potential clients need to know they are talking with an expert and not some mock agency claiming they can get results.

I'd Really like to see this change and still get phone calls from these jokers

Really hopes this helps because I've felt that sting before and it's not cool.

Bonus Tip: Instead of working with random people coming to you who may not have the resources to hire your agency, Research job boards and headhunters and contact these companies to let them know they can sub the work out instead of hiring an "employee" This will actually save them $$$ and help your agency secure a "real" client.